Marathon Accelerated - Game Speed Mod, help me balance.

Hello,

Update 18.07.2009: Version 1.1 released

I've created a simple new mod that adds a new game speed; Marathon Accelerated.

It's a game speed based on the Marathon standard template with certain modifications.

• Unit and building production speeds have been increased to match that of the Normal game speed setting. They are now both set to 100% instead of 200% (units) and 300% (buildings) in the standard Marathon setting. This should make the AI a bit tougher as it is programmed to play on normal setting where both production speeds are equal.
• Research time for technologies has been increased to 560% instead of the 300% of the standard Marathon setting.*
• Build Research has been given to the Mysticism technology instead of Alphabet so that you’re not forced to create units early game when there’s no buildings left to build.

You can now expect to fight long wars in the same era without units becoming obsolete quickly. Realize that a technology advantage is far more valuable with these settings than with standard Marathon. As the AI is not as clever as human players it is recommended that you play on one notch higher difficulty than you would normally play on. This is especially true if you normally play on Monarch and below.

Note that Settlers still take a long time to build as their build time seem to be related to city growth which has not been reduced to 100% from 300% like production. Even if this could be changed I don’t think it would be beneficial to the game flow.

*Over 20 AI simulations have been run thus far with the AI either being slightly behind historical events or somewhat ahead. Whether it is ahead or behind depends greatly on the map size and AI competitors and such. In almost every test run the AI is only ahead or behind with 50 years or less, however. You can still play this setting with a small map but I don’t recommend that you increase the number of players above the map size standard.

It's just three XML files that have been edited and it's very easy to merge this with for instance BUG Mod. Simply copy over the XML files in the appropriate folder. I.e. C:\Games\Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUG Mod 3.6\Assets\XML\GameInfo as an example.

I wrote up a readme, I'll post the contents here:

Marathon Accelerated 1.1
------------------------

1.) The production speed has been altered so that it is equal to the Normal speed setting.
Units and buildings now scale equally compared to normal so that human players won't get
an advantage over the AI in this regard by building more units that the AI is programmed
to do.

Production of both units and buildings are now 100% equal to Normal speed instead of
200% (units) and 300% (buildings) on standard Marathon.

Special features and projects (Apollo, Internet, Spaceship and spaceship components) take
400% longer than normal instead of 300% on standard Marathon.

2.) City growth has not been increased, it remains the same as standard Marathon.

3.) Tile improvements speed (workers) have been increased to 100% instead of 300%.

4.) Cottage->Hamlet improvements have not been altered from standard Marathon (300% still).
Reducing this might produce very strong economies early on.

5.) Research takes 560% (!) longer than on Normal speed instead of the Marathon 300% standard.
This change has been introduced to combat the potential effects that quicker building
production might cause. Science buildings will be easier to get and as such obtaining
new technologies might have been easier if the percentage was not adjusted upwards.

I expect that this will result in slower research in the start (when no science buildings are
available) but a more similar research rate to standard Marathon (or even quicker) in the late game.

To help combat an immensly slow start the ability to build Research has been added to the Mysticism
technology instead of Alphabet.

6.) Great people spawn just as often as on Marathon, however the science beaker they produce
when being spent towards a technology is still 300%.

7.) Culture has been changed. The last three cultural development stages, that is
refined, influential and legendary, have been increased with 40% additional culture points. This has
been added to combat the fact that you'll be able to produce more culture buildings in the
same time period compared to the Marathon Standard speed setting.

Refined is now 2100, influential is now 21000 points and legendary 210000 instead of 1500, 15000 and 150000.

The stages prior to refined have not been altered.

8.) Inflation has been increased slightly (11% instead of 10%, Epic uses 20% and Normal 30%)
to offset increased wealth generation via an abundance of Markets/Grocers/Banks etc.

Click to expand...

To install simply unzip the .zip and place the files in a folder under the mod folder, like such:

C:\Games\Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Marathon Accelerated

Then load the MOD as normal via the Civ4 user interface.

Copy the .XML files in any other mod folder in the appropriate location to merge it with another mod.

Text for Version 1.0:



Thanks for reading,
AveiMil

I haven't tried it out and doubt I will have time to but I suspect there will be alot of cities producing wealth, beakers, or culture.

Thanks for the input, but I don’t think that will be an issue.

Wealth/Science/Culture production depends on available hammers (production). “Available” hammers don’t increase or decrease on Marathon compared to Normal, only the amount it takes to produce something (unit/building) is increased. So you should get the same amount of Wealth/Science/Culture per turn as in Marathon.

However, I have noticed one possible "problem"; build time of Settler is linked with city growth and considering City Growth is not adjusted, it now takes a long time to build a Settler compared to a worker (which don't seem to be linked with city growth in the same manner). Not sure if this will have a big impact on game play other than maybe you'll want to build more workers before each Settler. Any thoughts?

Whenever I have played Marathon games I've accidentally quickly found myself running out of things to build. So I build more archers or warriors or workboats.

If the unit and building build speed is increased even more as in this mod, I too would suspect a lot of time will be spent building wealth or research etc.

Why did you choose not to set the build speeds to something slower than on Epic? I would have thought putting both at 200%, 250% or even 300% would have been more fitting than 150% as it is on Epic.

PieceOfMind said:

Whenever I have played Marathon games I've accidentally quickly found myself running out of things to build. So I build more archers or warriors or workboats.

If the unit and building build speed is increased even more as in this mod, I too would suspect a lot of time will be spent building wealth or research etc.

Why did you choose not to set the build speeds to something slower than on Epic? I would have thought putting both at 200%, 250% or even 300% would have been more fitting than 150% as it is on Epic.

Click to expand...

Oh, I think I misunderstood Mr Flevance's point.

I understand what you mean now, thanks for the input.

However, do you think that will make the game less or more interesting? Granted, some cities (at least the most productive ones) will quickly (or quicker) run out of things to build for quite a few turns’ in-between new technologies being developed and thus you’ll be well served to build Wealth/Science/Culture. Though, this gives you more room to focus on military production in any one given era and in addition the technologies that enable building of Wealth/Science/Culture will become valued to a greater extent.

Also, considering the research time for new technology is tuned up, running Science production in cities might be necessary more so than before anyway.

Anyway, I’m more or less speculating while running my first game test. So far I’m in 1350 BC and doing quite well on Monarch. Which is abnormal for me considering I’ve never won a game on Monarch yet. However I think it has something to do with the fact that I drew Caesar (random) and got Iron in my capital (after missing out on Copper) and was able to use Praetorians to capture 3 cities from the score leader. Praetorians are sick!

I don’t know how the game will evolve with these settings, but so far it’s been enjoyable. Perhaps increasing production of units/buildings to 200% from 150% would be a good idea, however.

AveiMil said:

Oh, I think I misunderstood Mr Flevance's point.

I understand what you mean now, thanks for the input.

However, do you think that will make the game less or more interesting? Granted, some cities (at least the most productive ones) will quickly (or quicker) run out of things to build for quite a few turns’ in-between new technologies being developed and thus you’ll be well served to build Wealth/Science/Culture. Though, this gives you more room to focus on military production in any one given era and in addition the technologies that enable building of Wealth/Science/Culture will become valued to a greater extent.

Click to expand...

That's hard to say really I think. It would be nice to always feel on top of things. However, the AI's bonuses will make you feel inadequete (sp?) possibly. The wars will be rather insane possibly. Unit upgrades will be more reasonable though. This is alot of wealth and spare science available. I personally think that it is one of those things where things just change. It could get boring though if not careful - where you accidentally end up doing more button mashing than before because its easy to get all the buildings you need and all the units you need and everything is building wealth. Which is the line you probably will want to find. Where you don't cut off too much.

Also, considering the research time for new technology is tuned up, running Science production in cities might be necessary more so than before anyway.

Anyway, I’m more or less speculating while running my first game test. So far I’m in 1350 BC and doing quite well on Monarch. Which is abnormal for me considering I’ve never won a game on Monarch yet. However I think it has something to do with the fact that I drew Caesar (random) and got Iron in my capital (after missing out on Copper) and was able to use Praetorians to capture 3 cities from the score leader. Praetorians are sick!

I don’t know how the game will evolve with these settings, but so far it’s been enjoyable. Perhaps increasing production of units/buildings to 200% from 150% would be a good idea, however.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I bet you won't get a good view of the new system until the late medeival age and on. For me that's the time where my cities generally have everything they need then suddenly they all need 10 buildings/wonders/etc.

Thanks for your input, I'll just have to try this out and see how it plays out.

If anyone else is interrested to test that would be great! I'm now at 500 BC and it's been fun and good so far. I'm thinking perhaps production should be slowed down to 200% instead of 150% though. If you want to run 200% instead of 150% just edit the following in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml

<iTrainPercent>200</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>200</iConstructPercent>
<iBuildPercent>200</iBuildPercent>

In 935 AD and so far it's been nothing but enjoyable. I've had the oppertunity to wage war for a prolonged period of time with lots of units without the units becoming obsolete so quickly. Pretty fun.

Anyone else care to run a test?

I might be able to run a test in the next week or two. This kinda sprung up at a strange time for me. When my schedule calms down I will give it a go. If you can keep us updated on how things are going though. I am curious about this now.

Out of curiosity what difficulty do you play at AveiMil?

Well I'm at about the 14th Century AD in my first game with this mod, and me winning this game is already foregone conclusion. I've vassalized 4 of my biggest rivals, and have a permanent alliance with a 5th. The interesting thing is, I was initially planning on going for a cultural victory.

Overall, I must say that playing with this mod has been really quite enjoyable, if a little easy, especially playing through the BC era. I really like how the ages are extended, but it doesn't have that stretched feel normal Marathon has. Actually fighting a series of wars with medieval tech is quite fun.

Other than difficulty, the only real nitpick I found with the mod was that my game's tech level was WAY ahead of the historical curve. In the middle of the 1200's, I was waging a war with China with American Civil War era technology (Cannons, Riflemen, Cavalry) being used by both sides. Now there's nothing wrong with that, it's just that when I noticed that I fought the battle of Gettysburg at a time the crusades were supposed to be going on, it threw me off a bit

Of course, this could be because of the way I played. I was the first to discover Judaism, Taoism, and Islam, and I made it a point to spread the religions, especially Judaism, across the globe, and I built the monasteries for all religions in every city the first chance I got. The fact that I got 90% of the other civs to convert to Judaism boosted my relations, and I didn't have to worry too much about fighting wars. In fact, I was on friendly terms with half of the other civs. If Buddhist Elizabeth didn't beat me to the Apostolic Palace (by a single turn, no less), I probably could've won a diplomatic victory before even the 1st Century AD.

But me building an obscene amount of monasteries (and other beaker-giving buildings) early on doesn't explain how China, who seemed to be playing a war balanced civ, and England, who was stuck on an island with 5 cities, was keeping parity with me. Even weirder is how, even at parity I still managed to hand China its rear-end on a platter. I don't know if the AI knows how to handle the accelerated production times, but I managed to out-produce them at least 3 to 1. And my civ was half their size. Their stack of doom managed to take one of my major cities, but I just attrited them with a constant flow of cannons and cavalry every turn, before they could even reach the next city. 40 turns later, I take over half their country, and sign a capitulation deal that makes the treaty of Versailles look like the fairest deal in history.

Another thing is, I actually ran out of buildings to build at few points. I tend to improve cities before enlarging my army (something that killed many a game for me). But this game, there was nothing left to do BUT build a massive army. Now, I'm not exactly sure what to make of this, because this does encourage more fighting. And war is always fun. But on the flip side, I actually had nothing to do on the home front but build wealth and culture. I don't know how that can be fixed, aside from increasing building build times, which defeats the purpose of the mod methinks.

Oh well, that's enough of me nitpicking in excruciating detail. Overall, I love what this mod does. It lets me enjoy the ancient and medieval eras more, and I don't have to slog through ridiculous build times. Since you said that was your goal, I'd say mission accomplished.


Considering how I utterly dominated that last game, I'm going to start a game on Monarch (I, too, have yet to win on that one) difficulty, and use the PerfectWorld2 map script, and go for a conquest win. I'll get back to you on that.

Actually, building wealth is a viable option on normal speed already. The intuitive (but not necessarily correct) thing in this mod would be to build every building available and THEN go to wealth or units. It may be a better idea to only build essentials, then go to units, as per normal conduct. Maybe one or two types of buildings might pass a return on investment check they wouldn't on other speeds, but oftentimes sinking hammers into something with minimal returns is a very poor choice (example: putting a market in a hammer city with minimal commerce----->bad waste unless you have a lot of the resources and need the in rep or something).

Just reading the lines on the changes the implication seems to be that you'd want the bare minimum buildings, grab a tech lead or a lasting parity, and then go to town with heaping helpings of siege + stack defense. The AI might have some extra units compared to normal but once you clear its stack it will still produce them more slowly than on normal speed relative to troop movement, making war tactical weaknesses a big deal in this mod.

One could probably catphant a pangaea map clean up through immortal...although I suppose you can do that with the current marathon (and possibly epic) already.

TheMeInTeam said:

Actually, building wealth is a viable option on normal speed already. The intuitive (but not necessarily correct) thing in this mod would be to build every building available and THEN go to wealth or units. It may be a better idea to only build essentials, then go to units, as per normal conduct. Maybe one or two types of buildings might pass a return on investment check they wouldn't on other speeds, but oftentimes sinking hammers into something with minimal returns is a very poor choice (example: putting a market in a hammer city with minimal commerce----->bad waste unless you have a lot of the resources and need the in rep or something).

Click to expand...

Well, building all the buildings is fun Hehe.

In all seriousness I think you are right and this is a valid point. However, considering the length of Marathon I think that the 'return on investement check' will be drastically different than for Normal and that far more of the buildings will be worth building if you plan on playing through to the end and not achieve an early victory condition.

TheMeInTeam said:

Just reading the lines on the changes the implication seems to be that you'd want the bare minimum buildings, grab a tech lead or a lasting parity, and then go to town with heaping helpings of siege + stack defense. The AI might have some extra units compared to normal but once you clear its stack it will still produce them more slowly than on normal speed relative to troop movement, making war tactical weaknesses a big deal in this mod.

Click to expand...

You mean extra units compared to “normal Marathon” I guess?

Production relative to troop movement, ah, yet another good point. Never really considered that. But I guess that there’s little you can do to combat this? Only alternative as I see it would be to increase the production speed to 100% (instead of 150%) to mimic normal setting.

Actually, that does not seem to be much of a problem to me if we raise the research time even further; except that early on (before Alphabet) you’ll be forced to build units in all cities after the buildings have been completed promoting or almost forcing you into early wars. Now if we could give all players the option of building research from the start, this should enable players to take alternate routes to a greater degree.

Thoughts?

SilentHunter7 said:

Well I'm at about the 14th Century AD in my first game with this mod, and me winning this game is already foregone conclusion. I've vassalized 4 of my biggest rivals, and have a permanent alliance with a 5th. The interesting thing is, I was initially planning on going for a cultural victory.

Oh well, that's enough of me nitpicking in excruciating detail. Overall, I love what this mod does. It lets me enjoy the ancient and medieval eras more, and I don't have to slog through ridiculous build times. Since you said that was your goal, I'd say mission accomplished.

Considering how I utterly dominated that last game, I'm going to start a game on Monarch (I, too, have yet to win on that one) difficulty, and use the PerfectWorld2 map script, and go for a conquest win. I'll get back to you on that.

Click to expand...

Hello SilentHunter7,

I loved your nitpicking, much thanks for the great feedback!

I have not been able to play this setting for the past week as I've been playing multiplayer (LAN) with a friend and we're doing Normal (Marathon would take too long).

What you reported pretty much matches up with my own experiences and I've begun to make changes based on these data. Would you like to try a new version out soon? I'm hoping to have it ready sometime today.

Best wishes,
AveiMil

I've played a couple games with these settings and I'm having fun. I'm looking forward to updates.

OnmyojiOmn said:

I've played a couple games with these settings and I'm having fun. I'm looking forward to updates.

Click to expand...

What difficulty level? Can you tell me how the games have progressed?

I'm looking to finish up testing on version 1.1 and release it late tonight.

AveiMil said:

What difficulty level? Can you tell me how the games have progressed?

I'm looking to finish up testing on version 1.1 and release it late tonight.

Click to expand...

Noble difficulty. I do about as well as I usually do, but as always I get bored and stop around the middle ages and start a new game for the next sitting. I've found that playing peacefully in the early game is heavily penalized because there's nothing to use the excess production for if you're not building units. It wouldn't be fun or playable at all without my Idle Cities mod, though I'm thinking a small research percentage while idle might be warranted with speed settings like these.

Version 1.1 has been released. Please refer to the original post.

Ok, I loaded the mod (Is there a way to make it a permanent speed without loading its mod?) and it shows 5 speeds, Marathon accelerated and the normal ones. Which one should i pick for this thing? I just went with Normal hoping its set to it.

Ok.... I see a bug. Settlers are 300 Points to build when it is normally 100

Also, be a good idea to include an "idle" option. Maby offer 10% of production as gold/research/culture or just have it make the population happy by focusing on itself